On May 12, at the International Cryptography Conference EUROCRYPT 2026 held in Rome, Italy, the paper “Provable Security and Privacy Analysis of WPA3’s SAE and SAE-PK Protocols” by a research team led by Associate Professor Shan CHEN from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) won the Best Paper Award.

EUROCRYPT, organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), along with the International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO) and the International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT), is known as one of the “three top international cryptography conferences.” It is one of only two cryptography conferences recommended as Class A by the China Computer Federation (CCF). Only two papers received this honor at this conference.

Shan CHEN’s Research Group at SUSTech

The award-winning paper focuses on significant upgrades in the global wireless communication security field over the past decade, the latest Wi-Fi security standard, WPA3. As the next-generation security cornerstone for the interconnection of billions of devices, the security of WPA3 is crucial. The research targets its core protocols for protecting personal wireless networks, SAE (Basic Connection Mode) and SAE-PK (Enhanced Security Mode), conducting a systematic security and privacy analysis. The research team identified security vulnerabilities in the existing standard and provided efficient, low-cost, and highly compatible solutions.

The related results have been disclosed to the Wi-Fi Alliance and recognized, providing a rigorous security assessment basis and security enhancement solutions with provable security guarantees to strengthen global Wi-Fi communication security. The paper’s primary affiliation is SUSTech, the corresponding author is Shan CHEN, and other authors include PhD student Kaige PAN from the research group and PhD student Olga SANINA from Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.